Continued from saturday

Already in 1985 the Montreal Protocol was agreed upon according to which by 1999, the developed countries would gradually take steps to control the excessive emission of greenhouse gases, and the developing countries were to follow-suit within another ten years. Towards the end of the last century, in 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, many countries joined in an international treaty, "the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (popularly known as "UNFCCC"), to consider as to what should be done to reduce global warming. A few years later, in December 1997, a historic meeting in Kyoto, Japan, reached what is known as "the Kyoto Protocol". This Protocol sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The major difference between the earlier Convention (UNFCCC) and this Protocol is that while the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize human-induced gas emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so. The Protocol recognizes that the developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as a result of more than 150 years of their intense industrial activities. Therefore, it places a heavier responsibility on the developed nations under the ethical principle "common but differentiated responsibilities". Accordingly, the developed nations agreed to reduce their collective green house gas emissions by 5.2% from the 1990 level. 

As of October 2009, some 184 countries had signed and ratified this Protocol, which came into force on 16th February 2005. The most-noted non-member of the Protocol up-to-date is the United States which however, was a signatory of the earlier UNFCCC Convention. This is a bad setback for the successful implementation of the common global goals of combating global warming, because the US is responsible for a big percentage of the overall emissions of greenhouse gases. As of 1990 emission levels, the US was responsible for 36.1% of all such emissions. At the Kyoto meeting in 1997, the then US Vice-President, Al Gore was an active participant in putting the Protocol together. The then President, Bill Clinton signed that Protocol in 1997, but the then US Senate (controlled by the Republicans) refused to ratify it, citing potential damage to the US economy required by compliance. The Senate also did not agree with the ethical principle "common but differentiated responsibilities" which enabled the Kyoto Protocol to make certain concessions to developing countries, especially to China and India, in complying with the new emission standards of the same Protocol. In his Presidential campaign in 2000, George W. Bush promised to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. But, in 2001, President Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto accords as one of the first acts of his Presidency. He dismissed the Protocol as costly, describing it as "an unrealistic and ever-tightening straightjacket". Later, the Bush administration even went to the extent of questioning the validity of the science behind global warming, and claimed that millions of jobs would be lost if the US were to join this global project. Bush went on record saying:

This is a challenge that requires a 100% effort; ours, and the rest of the world’s. The world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases is the People’s Republic of China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India and Germany are among the top emitters. Yet, India was also exempt from Kyoto…America’s unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change… Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. 

Bush’s main concern appeared to be what he perceived as the ‘inconsistent’ letting off the hook of other large-scale greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters like India and China, by the Protocol’s categorizing them as ‘developing countries’. Although the Bush administration, merely using its own subjective interpretation of the Protocol’s principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" (CBDR), criticized the requirements imposed by the Protocol on the US, Paul Harris objectively describes what it really aimed at, when he writes:

The climate Convention recognizes that all countries are responsible for climate change and should endeavor to limit the pollution that causes it. However, following the CBDR principle, the treaty does not require developing countries to reduce their greenhouse gases. It instead requires the developed countries to take the "lead in modifying longer-term trends in anthropogenic emissions [of greenhouse gases] consistent with the objective of the Convention. Thus, there is a double standard built into the Climate Convention – a double standard that is meant to achieve the Convention’s objective of reducing GHGs to manageable levels in ways that are both effective and fair. It would be unfair to expect developing countries to limit their economic development when wealthy countries are most responsible for present concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases and expected consequences of this pollution for the global climate in the past century. 

A concerted global response to the threat of global warming will necessarily demand a sense of justice as fairness to all nations, in implementing or executing such a response. For example, both the Montreal and Kyoto Protocols try to be just to both the developing and developed nations when they imply a sense of distributive justice at the base of their decisions. That is to say that though all the nations are bound to do something, the obligations of those who have been mainly responsible (thus far) for global warming are much greater, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Thus, the greater burden of controlling the emission of greenhouse gases falls directly on the industrialized/developed nations simply because they were the ones who have been directly responsible for global warming so far, with their proportionately greater emitting of such gases. Hence the importance of the principle "common but differentiated responsibilities" in the Kyoto Protocol.  

In February 2007, the US agreed in principle on the outline of a successor document to the Kyoto Protocol. This outline envisaged a global cap-and-trade system that would apply to both the industrialized nations and the developing countries. Some six months later, in June 2007, the leaders of the 33rd G 8 nations summit (which includes the US) agreed on principle that the G 8 nations would aim to at least halve the global carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. At the 2008 international conference held in Poznan, Poland, in December 2008, one of the main topics discussed was the possible implementation of avoiding deforestation which is also known as "Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation" into the future Kyoto Protocol.  

It is in this sense that the recent climate summit in Copenhagen (6th to 20th December 2009) was attributed with so much of importance. Before the summit, there was a lot of optimism that something radical will happen at this important meeting. However, after so much of noise and rhetoric (and also huge expenses), the Copenhagen Summit ended on a very low key hardly two weeks ago. Nations, especially, the already developed industrialized nations and the developing nations led by China, India and Brazil, could not agree as how they should go about in reducing the gases they emit as a result of their ever-growing industries. China and India openly said that they will not be able to reduce their gas emissions, while the USA was inconsistent in its undertakings, and finally, the meeting ended without any serious, radical common agreement. That they could not go beyond the Kyoto Protocol is unfortunate, and the fact that even the mild agreement reached upon at Copenhagen is non-binding, is even more troublesome.

As the reader would have noticed by now, what is crucially but most obviously missing in the contemporary world efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases is a competent, credible world authority that could ensure the implementation of what is agreed upon at international conferences. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the formation of the United Nations Organization (UNO) brought so much of hope not only for world peace but also for international solidarity. In the ensuing decades, the two ", the United States of America and the Soviet Union go engaged in what was popularly known as the "Cold War", the ideological socio-economic battle between Capitalism and Collectivism (Communism). But unfortunately, with the collapse of the ex-Soviet Union and its East European type of Communism in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the world is left today with just one single, but notorious "super power", the United States. Instead of overtly behaving as what she is, i.e, the supreme guarantor and promoter of contemporary Capitalism (as represented by contemporary ideology of Globalization of market economies), the USA has allied herself with her like-minded Western allies and called themselves by the respectable but fictitious term of "international community". This "international community" has not only usurped the role played by the UNO, but has even defied it openly as was evident in the way it waged the second Gulf War in 2003 by unjustly invading Iraq under the false pretext of the presence of "weapons of mass destruction" in that country. The continuous double standards this so-called "international community" has been using during the past two decades or so, in fulfilling its self-appointed role of being the "international policeman", has already made it’s presumed impartiality and interest in the common good of the world as a whole, very dubious. That is also why Pope Benedict renews the appeal made by all the modern Popes for an impartial, credible world authority that could take binding decisions for the common good of the whole world. The relevance and usefulness of such an appeal is more than obvious after the recent Copenhagen meeting, i.e., the need for such a world authority that could make binding decisions for the common good of all humanity. Binding decisions on the emission of greenhouse gases needs surely to be one such binding decision.

Last but not least, as the Pope says in this year’s Peace Day Message: "The environment must be seen as God’s gift to all people, and the use we make of it entails a shared responsibility for all humanity, especially the poor and future generations". Pope Benedict goes on to point out that human beings ought to be "stewards" of nature, in the sense of being responsible users of the same nature. Humans are called, to be co-workers or co-creators in using God’s creation for the benefit of all human beings, since God created this world for all, not for this or that person or group of persons. It is in this sense that the Pope joins his immediate venerable predecessor, the late Pope John Paul II in calling the world to be in solidarity in the responsible using and protecting of nature. In this year’s message for World Peace Day, he appeals to all people of good will, irrespective of creed, race or nation: "If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation. The quest for peace by people of good will surely would become easier if all acknowledge the indivisible relationship between God, human beings and the whole of creation". Environmental issues, surely have now become global peace issues, especially in view of the recent fiasco at Copenhagen.